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arXiv:quant-ph/0608219 · Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Theoretical study of fast light with short sech pulses in coherent gain media

B. D. Clader, Joseph H. Eberly

Published Mar 15, 2007• 13 citations
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Abstract

We investigate theoretically the phenomenon of so-called fast light in an unconventional regime, using pulses sufficiently short that relaxation effects in a gain medium can be ignored completely. We show that previously recognized gain instabilities, including superfluorescence, can be tolerated in achieving a pulse peak advance of more than one full peak width.

DOI
10.1364/josab.24.000916

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We investigate theoretically the phenomenon of so-called fast light in an unconventional regime, using pulses sufficiently short that relaxation effects in a gain medium can be ignored completely. We show that previously recognized gain instabilities, including superfluorescence, can be tolerated in achieving a pulse peak advance of more than one full peak width.
We experimentally investigate the propagation of optical pulses through a fast-light medium with competing absorption and gain. The combination of strong absorption and optical amplification in a potassium-based four-wave mixing process results in pulse peak advancements up to 88% of the input pulse width, more than 35× that which is achievable without competing absorption. We show that the enhancement occurs even when the total gain of the four-wave mixer is unity, thereby rendering the medium transparent. By varying the pulse width, we observe a transition between fast and slow light, and show that fast light is optimized for large pulse widths.
We present an analysis of the propagation of light pulses through materials possessing extreme values of the group velocity. We begin with an analysis of the behaviour that occurs upon propagation through materials possessing simple Lorentzian gain or absorption lines or materials possessing sharp dips in gain or absorption features. We also describe how more complicated lineshapes can be used to tailor the dispersion of a slow-light system. We furthermore present an analysis of fundamental limitations to how many pulse widths a pulse of light can be delayed or advanced. We show how these mechanisms lead to different limits for slow and fast propagation media.
In a previous paper (Song et al., 2005) we reported the first experimental demonstration of pulse advancement with gain in optical fibers using stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). We tested the two methods described above to achieve gain-assisted fast light and demonstrated experimentally that the method based on the double Brillouin gain peak produces pulse advancement with lower distortion. However, the distortion achieved in these experiments was still far from ideal, and the underlying scientific challenge to produce fast light with negligible distortion remains intact. In this paper we propose a simple scheme for achieving fast light with low distortion, based on the unique and flexible properties of Brillouin amplification. We demonstrate experimentally that this scheme delivers better results than the previously reported ones.